The Financial Women's Association of San Francisco annually awards a number of scholarships to undergraduate and graduate women pursuing a career in finance or financial services at an accredited college or university located within the nine Bay Area counties.

This year they awarded a total of $90,000 to six graduate students and six undergraduate students. Graduate students receive awards of $10,000 each and undergraduates receive $5,000 each. The winners at the graduate level are from the Mills College Graduate School of Business, Stanford, and UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business.

We congratulate our two winners! 

Katherine Duran is currently in the MBA program and expects to graduate in May 2008. Katherine began her education at City College of San Francisco, with a goal to obtain enough skills in mathematics to pass her GED exam. Katherine’s goals changed dramatically, however, and while working full-time and going to school part-time, she successfully completed all of her courses and transferred to Mills College to complete her undergraduate degree in mathematics.

While studying for her MBA at Mills, Katherine has filled both leadership and supporting roles in financial analysis projects ranging from Corporate Finance to microeconomics and macroeconomics. Her goal is to continue studying cost minimization and profit maximizing structures and apply such knowledge to furthering her knowledge of financial markets and market analysis.

Theresa Vevea obtained her bachelor’s degree in economics from Mills College and has just begun the MBA program. After spending almost twenty years in the airline industry, Theresa decided to return to school to pursue her personal goals of obtaining degrees in the field of finance and expects to graduate in May 2008.

Theresa chose to focus on finance because her experience with the airline industry raised her consciousness of the importance of finance on business viability. Further, after having been entrenched in that industry during the events of September 11, Theresa became keenly aware of the potentially harmful impact of a business’s financial uncertainly on stockholder’s confidence and employee morale. Her main area of interest is in the commercial banking industry, and she is currently interning with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (the FDIC) where she is gaining valuable regulatory experience by conducting research for the FDIC’s Division of Insurance and Research.